More of the Same… or New Ways Forward?
Victim Support Service’s
National Victims of Crime Conference
September 2008
This summary of ‘reflections’ from the National Victims of Crime Conference held by
Victim Support Service in September 2008 does not attempt to cover all the
presentations by over 40 speakers, but rather it tries to look forward from some key
lessons and reflections together in one place. The conference aimed to bring some
ideas, recommendations and action steps into the open with a focus on its theme of
“New Ways Forward” and “Pathways to Change”.
It is fitting indeed to begin with the words of the opening speaker, Lowitja O’Donoghue
AC, CBE, who did far more than welcome delegates to the conference on behalf of
Aboriginal people by reminding us that “if social systems do not operate effectively to
support victims of crime and gross injustice, it is very difficult, indeed, to rebuild strong,
healthy and meaningful lives”. This message established the tone for the conference
which set about exploring many aspects of this statement – the social and other causes
of crime; existing practices and processes in health, welfare and justice systems
around Australia and elsewhere in the world; support and therapeutic interventions for
victims of crime and abuse of power; crime policy development and the rights of
victims; and ways to do things better.
The challenge issued by Lowitja to us all was to stop the “political chest beating about
getting tough on law and order” and “work (together) with integrity and courage” in a
united front to “find resolution for the victims of crime”. We learned that we can only do
this by leaving political agendas behind, have the genuine commitment to look at the
existing evidence of what actually works to reduce victimisation, the sense to invest
heavily in what works, and the vision to plan beyond the four year election cycle.
A Plan for What Works
Dr Irvin Waller summed up the future needs on Radio 891 (26 September) when he
said “you need to have some sort of permanent agency at a very senior level in
Government that brings together schools, housing, social services and police and says,
we’re going to have a plan to solve this problem - look at what the causes are. We’re
going to intervene with those and we’re going to get serious about it and actually
manage it in a modern sense”, and have “leadership at the top level of Government
that brings these agencies together so you don’t have a social exclusion unit doing one
thing and the police doing another. That you actually have people talking about a whole
Government (approach) - real concrete operations guided by information and data”.
Thus we need a plan – we have South Australia’s Strategic Plan but no strategic long
term plan for crime reduction and prevention. We need community leaders of influence
in Parliament and the Administration of Government to champion this cause and
become the ‘permanent agency’ to which Waller refers. Maybe a clear process and an
influential change agent can have the same effect as an ‘agency’?
Waller expressed strong commitment to the power of democracy through voters who
are empowered to monitor Governments’ achievements and accountability to the plan
once it exists - but they need to be educated to understand the issues and be shown
what works (the evidence). So we need to do this. He explained that progressive
More of the Same… Or New Ways Forward? -1-
Governments have asked voters and been surprised that “ordinary people understand
crime much better than the media headlines of populist politicians. People know that it
(crime) has a lot to do with parenting, more people going out to work, more single
mothers below the poverty line, young men dropping out of school because they see
no future. They want to see people held accountable, not necessarily through
incarceration, also through reparation”.
“The public is not as dumb as some of these populist politicians think. If you actually
look at public opinion polls that give a choice, what you see is that the public is about
two to one in most of the Western world, two to one in favour of investing in programs
that help young men to complete school, help young men to get jobs, rather than
spending more money on courts and prisons.”
The lesson here for me is that the average person, including most victims, want far
more than prison for perpetrators – they understand the causes of crime and want
Governments to intervene.
We know from Dr Waller that spending more and more on police and putting people in
gaol reaches a saturation point and becomes pointlessly wasteful as incarceration soon
stops reducing crime any further - “One dollar for prevention equals seven dollars for
mass incarceration”.
Waller showed that we need to reduce the risk factors, including:
• Reduce poverty and inadequate housing
• Provide consistent and caring parenting and reduce the opportunity for young
people to witness intra-familial violence
• Increase social and cognitive abilities in at risk young people
• Reduce behavioural problems at primary school
• Improve school relevance and retention
• Reduce frequent unemployment and resulting limited income
• Reduce the culture of violence on television and in the community
So this lesson is an easy one – we must invest in strategies to address at least these
risk factors as early as possible with our youth and younger children.
On Radio 5AA (24 September), Irvin Waller said that “people are realising that waiting
until the crime occurs, trying to catch the person, trying to convict them, is not a
sufficient solution. You need to do that for the more dangerous, the more persistent
(offenders), but the idea that with some investment in programs for youth at risk, to try
and change teenagers’ attitudes to women, to try and get the police to be more
intelligent (meaning using more data systems and working with services), trying to
improve the design of the things that we have around us so that they’re less likely to be
stolen - all of that. There’s a huge amount of evidence to show that it works”.
We heard Premier Mike Rann formally opening the conference with encouraging and
visionary words about South Australia being a leader in giving rights and support to
crime victims dating back to the late 1970’s when Victim Support Service began, and
the 80’s when the Declaration of Victims’ Rights was introduced - being an example for
the rest of the world in addressing criminal victimisation, but, in the words of Birgitte
Sorensen, crime victim and Chair of the Victim Support Service Board, “simply put, the
Government needs a crime prevention strategy”.
Governments can only lead as long as they take a combined approach, being both
tough on crime and tough on its causes. We learned that many jurisdictions are already
walking this pathway.
More of the Same… Or New Ways Forward? -2-
Representation and Restorative Justice
Other key issues and strategies to improve victims’ rights and the criminal justice
system included giving victims’ legal representation to take a greater participatory role
in the justice process, This was highlighted by a number of speakers. In particular,
Waller recommended that South Australia should adopt the approach of the
International Criminal Court (ICC), which Australia has ratified, where the interests of
the victims are considered throughout the whole process. That is, where a lawyer
represents the victim and is paid for by the court. This approach has been in place in
France for more than 40 years, where the legal system is inquisitorial rather than the
adversarial system in Australia.
Martin Hinton QC, former Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions and now Solicitor-
General in South Australia, reflected strongly that our adversarial system “forgets
victims” when it should provide them with choice – choice to be involved in merely
locking ‘their’ offender up or obtaining some recovery and acknowledgement for
themselves, as well as opportunity for the offender to make reparation and obtain
rehabilitative treatment. He stated that a more holistic approach is needed and
suggested both parties might be better off with more creative sentencing options and/or
restorative processes.
Dr Jo-Anne Wemmers brought new thoughts to the restorative justice discussions in
this country, showing an interesting perspective on how to move the debate and
implementation forward. Victim Support Service remains committed to the values and
principles of restorative practices (I refer readers to the Position Paper “Restorative
Justice” on our website www.victimsa.org) and I am enthused by the way the ICC
operates as a model for us to pursue which strengthens victims’ rights through
representation or “standing” and can be integrated and added-on to the existing system
with less adversarial combat and more truth. We can do a lot to improve the current
system now, even while we advocate for the higher aim of legal representation.
I can do no better than summarise by using Jo-Anne’s own words in concluding her
paper:
“Over thirty years after the birth of the victims’ movement and the discovery of the
plight of the victim, victims are still essentially witnesses to a crime against the state
with few rights. During this time, restorative justice has emerged as an approach that
advocates victim participation and recognition of the harm committed against the
victim. Despite the strong role that it gives victims, the restorative justice movement
has not changed victims’ role in the conventional criminal justice system. In part, this is
because many advocates of restorative justice see it as an alternative to the
conventional criminal justice system. While restorative justice has been successfully
introduced as an alternative approach for minor offences in many jurisdictions, it is
unrealistic to think that restorative justice could ever completely replace the
conventional criminal justice system. More importantly, as we have seen, victims see
themselves as part of the criminal justice system and wish to remain in the criminal
justice framework.”
“If we truly want to address the plight of victims then we must stop excluding victims
and start including them in the criminal justice system. The introduction of victim impact
statements in common law systems was an important first step in that regard. But it is
not enough. How victims participate in the criminal justice process is also important.
The emergence of restorative justice, and in particular restorative justice values,
provides an opportunity for criminal justice authorities to treat victims as well as
offenders with dignity and respect. After all, it was not recognizing the rights of the
accused that pushed victims out of the criminal justice system. The State moved
More of the Same… Or New Ways Forward? -3-
criminal justice away from the victim to the security of society. Restorative justice
values correspond with what victims want: recognition and validation from the criminal
justice system as well as protection from the offender without burdening victims with
too much responsibility. Decision-making power would remain in the hands of
authorities. We need to begin to recognize that crime affects victims as well as society
and that victims have a legitimate interest in the criminal justice process. We need to
open up the criminal justice process to include victims.”
There were some examples of where restorative justice is being trialled in South
Australia as part of the criminal justice system, including Aboriginal conferencing in
Port Lincoln, as presented by Eric Kasearu and Terrence Wilson and victim offender
conferencing, as presented by Dr Andrew Cannon. A key message here is to ensure
that processes do not allow any imbalance of power between victim and offender to
manifest itself.
However while Irvin Waller was somewhat supportive of restorative justice, he was
critical that many people involved come from a defence counsel background
representing the offender’s perspective and are trying to minimise the penalty for the
offender. He was much more supportive of victims having standing in the criminal
court.
Jo-Anne and Irvin clearly showed us that victims’ rights can co-exist with offenders’
rights as the rights of humans – they don’t have to compete or be set against each
other as is often the case in a traditional adversarial courtroom. Presentations by Leigh
Garrett, Andrew Paterson, and Kathy Daly all showed how dynamic this field of
restorative practices is and what new pathways we may be able to travel. As criminal
justice reformers, both offender and victim advocates are working together through
restorative justice models to improve the current system – it is time for policy makers
and the criminal justice system to catch up and get aboard as we try to accelerate
along this existing but hopefully renewed pathway and new ones.
Relevance and Youth
We need a justice system which is accessible and valued by its users otherwise crime
victims will not report (victims of sexual assault, for example, report at no more than
15%).
Maybe wider application and availability of restorative justice processes could improve
victim satisfaction and therefore reporting, significantly? Delegates were reminded by
Irvin Waller and Jennifer Duncan from Youth Affairs Council of SA that there must be
relevance in the system for participation to occur. Jennifer gave clear evidence that our
system is “irrelevant” to young people and that our youth are more statistically likely to
become victims, rather than perpetrators, of crime.
Jennifer quoted figures from the SA Office of Crime Statistics and Research which
showed in South Australia in 2006:
• males constituted 78% of the victims of homicide and related offences, and of
these, 36% were aged 15-24 years;
• males accounted for 72% of all victims of robbery, with half of all male victims
being aged between 15-24 years; and
• females represented 84% of all recorded victims of sexual assault, with 45% of
these aged 10-19 years.
It is likely that South Australia is not all that different from other comparable
communities in Australia and we can all learn from this sample set of numbers and do
more to respond to this alienated category of victims. Jennifer suggested that:
More of the Same… Or New Ways Forward? -4-
“The way that the criminal justice system and its associated agencies respond to the
needs of young people as victims of crime is paramount to engendering trust in the
system and further encouraging young people to report crime. The information and
support services provided by victim agencies are frequently directed to older victims.
This can pose as a barrier to accessing available services which can help with support,
counselling, financial compensation and the like.”
Responding to Trauma
In her interview from Harvard University, Dr Judith Herman highlighted several powerful
messages about treatment for victims, which included:
• the importance of bridging the 'researcher' and 'clinician' divide. Researchers
need to be more respectful of clinicians.
• her recent research into prostitution, which indicates that from a public
awareness perspective, we are only at a point with prostitution where we were
twenty years ago with gender based violence. Recognition of prostitutes/sex
workers as victims of crime and trauma is still a major issue and we are not
doing enough for them.
• her statement that "Trauma 101" should be a compulsory subject for a range of
fields e.g. police, lawyers, doctors and counsellors.
Judith also expressed concern about the current focus on short-term treatment models,
including Cognitive Behaviour Treatments, for trauma. She has concerns about their
effectiveness if they are too short-term when working with complex trauma. "12
sessions is just not going to cut it".
David Kerr from Victim Support Service coined the phrase “creating and nurturing
resilience” which captures the essence of some of Judith’s input and what support
programmes and psychological interventions aim to do for crime victims. The main
challenge David identified is to research, recognise and implement the best, most
effective treatment paradigms for victims depending on their needs.
Services must be responsive and have the knowledge and expertise to be effective in
identifying and ‘treating’ all the stages of psychological distress through which a victim
might be going.
National Pathways & New ways Forward
It is exciting to at last have interest from the Commonwealth Government in victims of
crime and we appreciated the presentation from Elizabeth Kelly and Carl Alderson
about Minister Bob Debus’ agenda for the future to support and empower victims of
Commonwealth offences and the historical context provided by Sam Garkawe and
Michael O’Connell.
Commonwealth criminal law has expanded over recent years to include a range of
offences with identifiable victims. These include offences directed against child sex
tourism, online grooming, terrorism and people trafficking. I was encouraged when
advised by Elizabeth that the Minister “will pursue a Charter of Victims’ Rights,
protections for vulnerable and disadvantaged witnesses, and provision for the use of
victim impact statements in sentencing federal offenders.”
More of the Same… Or New Ways Forward? -5-
Also on the National ‘highway’ Robyn Holder, Chair of Victim Support Australasia,
mapped out her signposts for the future including many of the needs identified
elsewhere in this paper and therefore during the conference. They include:
• The need for universality and consistency –“the government needs to step up”
and services need to do what ever is possible to improve quality and
consistency.
• The importance of addressing our problem with access and equity of responses
– to victims who are young, who have a mental illness or intellectual disability,
are not covered under Federal laws, who live in remote areas, are Aboriginal,
are from another culture or language, or disadvantaged in other ways.
• We need to be self-aware, self-critical and willing to debate.
• We must have and use evidence from research and best-practice to guide us.
• It is vital to “get serious about Victims’ Rights” and to get a more legal focus on
them.
• The Federal Government interest in victims is long overdue and welcomed in its
context of consultation and cooperation with the jurisdictions and their
expertise.
In Conclusion
We (i.e. the criminal justice system and particularly those of us who work with and for
crime victims) have come a long way on a generally conservative and traditional and
bumpy road, but we have a long way to go to gain equality and deserved recognition
for victims of crime. There as some key messages and suggestions for the way ahead
which have arisen from this National Conference - some of which are captured in this
paper. I hope you find it succinct and useful. My first and last words at the conference
sought to challenge us all to use the conference contributions from all over Australia
and indeed other parts of the world, to learn and to take action towards the common
goal of improving our system for crime’s victims. We can put up with more of the same,
or forge new ways forward. If you do care then, please, take another step.
Michael Dawson
Chief Executive
Victim Support Service
More of the Same… Or New Ways Forward? -6-